Chapter 41 Turtle Polygonum multiflorum?

It is a major feature of the text to describe the characters' personalities and reflect their inner activities by dictating certain items.In the twenty-sixth chapter, Xue Pan ordered Baoming to trick Baoyu into the Grand View Garden by saying, "The master is calling you." Today is my birthday, who knows Cheng Rixing from the antique shop, he did not know where he found such a thick and so long pink and crispy fresh lotus root, such a big watermelon, such a long tail of fresh sturgeon, such a big Siamese The Siamese pig scented with ling cypress that Luo Guo paid tribute to, do you think his four gifts are rare or not?...I want to eat it by myself, I'm afraid it will be a blessing, I think about it, besides me, you are the only one who deserves to eat it , so I invite you here...

"Zhi Yanzhai commented on this paragraph: "Writing about a rough and unintentional person, Bi Xiao", "It's as good as you see it", "This statement makes people cry and laugh, and it is also true." Indeed, a vulgar and fiery The image of a kind-hearted dandy came alive in the tone of describing several kinds of food. In the twenty-eighth chapter, after Baoyu once again passed through the emotional crisis caused by Daiyu's misunderstanding, she was extremely excited. At Mrs. Wang's place, Mrs. Wang just asked Daiyu casually, "Miss, do you eat that Baoyu?" Is the imperial doctor's medicine better?" And because he couldn't remember the name of a pill, Baoyu became presumptuous, saying that his mother was confused by "Vajra" and "Bodhisattva"; Sixty taels of silver, to prepare a pill for Daiyu, claiming that "it's enough to make sure you can't finish all the ingredients"; he said casually: "Really, my prescription is different from others, and the name of the medicine is also weird , I can't tell for a while..." There is a string of words below, because the manuscripts handed down back then did not have sentence breaks, and the printed copies we see now, such as the ones circulated based on the ones made by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E The twenty chapters are handled like this: "Only talk about the purple river cart, the human form with leaf ginseng, three hundred and sixty taels, tortoise, big Polygonum multiflorum, thousand-year-old pine root Poria cocos..." It is obviously awkward to read, "Three hundred and sixty taels is less than three hundred and sixty taels", does it refer to the weight of a human-shaped ginseng with leaves or the weight of a turtle?Some popular editions were simply changed to "three hundred and sixty taels of four-legged tortoise". However, there is no word "four-legged" in any of the manuscripts we have now. Such a change would infringe Cao Xueqin's copyright. In 1981, the annotated edition of the Dream of Red Mansions Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts was published by the People’s Literature Publishing House. This edition has made valuable efforts in restoring the original appearance of the first 80 chapters, but there are still problems. For example, in this place, it breaks sentences like this "Only talk about the purple river cart, the human form with leaf ginseng, three hundred and sixty taels, the turtle big Polygonum multiflorum, the thousand-year-old pine root Poria cocos gallbladder..." The proofreader assigned the "three hundred and sixty taels" to the human form Take leaf ginseng, and regard "turtle" as a description of "big polygoni multiflorum". In this way, Baoyu did not talk about five things in the above-mentioned words, but four things.

I think that although Baoyu is talking nonsense here, since he is serious about it, he must make it shocking without being logically outrageous. "Turtle Polygonum multiflorum" is logically unreasonable. How big is "Turtle Big"?There are many types of turtles. The shells of leatherback turtles, hawksbill turtles, and tortoises can be as long as three feet or even six to seven feet. If the rhizome Polygonum multiflorum, which is a herbaceous plant in the Polygonaceae family, is so big, it will make people feel like a monster. It may not have the medicinal power it should have; and some ornamental turtles, such as money turtles and green-haired turtles, may have a shell that is only one inch long, and Polygonum multiflorum that is one or two inches long is not too shabby, how can it be boasted?I thought that Baoyu was still talking about five kinds of things in the above-quoted paragraph, and the sentence should be concluded like this: "...the first-born purple river cart, human-shaped ginseng with leaves, three hundred and sixty taels of tortoise, big Polygonum multiflorum, thousand-year-old pine root Poria cocos gallbladder ..." He emphasized that finding everything is not easy. The turtle needs to be bigger, but the heavier the better, it must be close to 360 taels but not exceed it. The old scale was 16 taels to a catty. That is to say, the tortoise must be more than 22 catties but not 22 and a half catties (equivalent to the current calculation of the ten tael system, about fourteen catties and six taels).

We all remember that in the seventh chapter, Baochai talked about the formula of her "Lengxiang Wan", "It's really trivial to death, and all medicines are limited, only the word 'coincidentally' is rare. Twelve taels of peony stamens, twelve taels of white lotus stamens in summer, twelve taels of white hibiscus stamens in autumn, and twelve taels of plum blossom stamens in winter. These four stamens were dried in the sun on the spring equinox of the next year... I want rainwater for this day's rainwater for twelve dollars..." Wait, this "Lengxiang Wan" once aroused Daiyu's coquettishness towards Baoyu: "Even if I got the strange fragrance, no brother or brother got flowers or flowers." , Shuang'er, and Xue'er concocted it for me..." "I have a strange fragrance, do you have a 'nuan fragrance'?" These words settled in Baoyu's subconscious, and a trigger came out, and he used this to vent himself Willing to concoct "Nuanxiang Wan" for Daiyu, in order to compete with Baochai.Zhi Yanzhai commented on this: "The previous 'Jade Shengxiang' came back to the middle, and I said that he has gold and you have jade, and he has cold fragrance. You should not have warm fragrance. It is precious jade that has no medicine to match. If the ingredients of the potion are all nourishing and heat-inducing medicines, and there are many strange things, but the name has not yet been proposed, why not name it with Nuanxiang to replace the deficiency of precious jade, and it is not a trinity."

The more you think about "Turtle Polygonum multiflorum", the more confused you become. "Three hundred and sixty taels are not enough for turtles", but it is the same as "Twelve cents of rainwater on this day...there is such a coincidence of rain there, and if there is no rain, we have to wait." They complement each other, revealing the secret feelings surging in Baoyu's heart.Even in the "leisure writing" between major plots, Cao Xueqin is also enriching the character of the characters, just as Zhi Yanzhai praised: "How many hills and valleys the author has in his chest..."